Chris Hedges wrote a book after spending years attending some of the more prominent modern congregations that certain politicians have sprout from. The testimonies are incredible, we're talking hard core fundamentalism behind the scenes, many of these folks believe the states purpose IS to serve the church's will, "separation of church and state" to them is a mistake of "re-written" history. They're incredibly well organized and together can amass percentages of votes that can swing many elections. Many of them, today, believe COVID is of a higher will which you are not supposed to interefere with...
Pence is one of those guys, you might not know it by whatever he says in speeches but he belongs to a radical fundamentalist congregation and by all in-close reports buys into it 100%. That's why he scares me more than Trump. Cheney scares me more than Trump too. I'll take the 2-bit con man over the scheming intellectual. For me, besides being another dolt (which is just common in DC) Palin also had a fundamentalist rub to her...no thanks.
The fundamentalists consider this whole thing a war and their countrymen who disagree will be subject to the rapture, seriously crazy stuff.
I mean, it absolutely blows my mind we hear about "antifa" or "muslims" all day but we don't realize some of these folks in power have completely theo-fascist ideals.